Tag: human
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Discovery of First Fossil Hand Linked to P. Boisei Suggests the Bygone Human Relative Could Have Used Tools
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about tool use in our ancient cousins. A recent discovery of the first hand and foot bones on Paranthropus boisei has shed light on whether the species was able to use tools. The research was published in the journal Nature. “The authors make a compelling case that this individual would…
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PBS NOVA: Human Origins
PBS NOVA has a new 5 part series running on their website and Youtube. The first episode is called “Human Origins”. Check it out! Trace the remarkable origin story of Homo sapiens and the crucial moments that shaped our species. Official website: https://to.pbs.org/46djrws | #novapbs Where do we come from? To find out, journey back…
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Scientists Find Arm Bone of Ancient ‘Hobbit’ Human #fossils
The Mata Menge humerus fragment, left, shown to scale with the humerus of another Homo floresiensis specimen from Liang Bua.Credit…Yousuke Kaifu The New York Times has a new Carl Zimmer column about the “Hobbits” of Indonesia. New research into Homo floresiensis, a species of ancient humans sometimes referred to as “hobbits”, has uncovered toddler-size teeth…
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PBS Eons: Does Our “Junk” DNA Make Us Human?
PBS Eons has a new episode on Youtube. This one is about us and what is it that makes us, us. In the search for the genes that make us human, some of the most important answers were hiding not in the genes themselves, but in what was once considered genomic junk.
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PBS Eons: What If Neandertals Buried Their Dead?
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the Neanderthals and how they lived… and died. They cared for their sick and disabled, so I feel its not ridiculous to think that they very much buried their dead. They had compassion, surely they wanted to say goodbye to their loved ones and probably…
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PBS Eons: The Extinct Human Species Found In Remote Cave Chambers
There's a new episode of PBS Eons over on Youtube. This one is about human evolution… the discovery of Homo naledi in a cave in Africa back in 2013. Deep in the Rising Star Cave system lies a mystery of paleoanthropology: a chamber filled with the bones of Homo naledi.
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PBS Eons: How Did Lucy Live and Die?
There's a new episode of PBS Eons on Youtube, The live and death of Lucy, who is the Australopithecus discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, says much about human evolution. She lived about 3.2 million years ago. Did our most famous fossil ancestor, Lucy, die by falling out of a tall tree? The answer is…
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PBS Eons: The Ancient Human Species With A Missing Body
There's a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about the Denisovans, a group of ancient humans from Asia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. Only a handful of Denisovan fossils have been identified. In the absence of actual body fossils, it’s impossible for us to reconstruct their morphology, right? Listen to Eons: Mysteries…
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PBS Eons: How Horses Went from Food to Friends
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the domestication of horses. Do our modern horses descend from just one domesticated population, or did it happen many times, in many places? Answering these questions has been tricky, as we’ve needed to bring together evidence from art, archaeology, and ancient DNA…Because, as it…
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Art Exhibition “human / nature” at the Illinois State Museum
ESCONI member Andrew Young is participating in a new art exhibition at the Illinois State Museum. The exhibition is called “human / nature: the weight of our actions on the natural world”. It runs from July 31st, 2021 until January 29th 2022 and is sure to be an enlightening and stimulating experience. Check it out! …
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NYT: Ancient Remains in Peru Reveal Young, Female Big-Game Hunter
The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about an ancient big game hunter… a female big game hunter. The 9,000 year old female skeleton was discovered with what archaeologists describe as a “big-game hunting kit” in the Andes highlands of Peru. This discovery is challenging the beliefs that in hunter-gatherer societies – males…
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PBS Eons: When Hobbits Were Real
A new episode of PBS Eons is out. And, this one is about Homo floresiensis, otherwise known as the “hobbit”. Its discoverers named it Homo floresiensis, but it’s often called “the hobbit” for its short stature and oddly proportioned feet. And it’s been at the center of a major controversy in the field ever…
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PBS Eons: The Missing Link That Wasn’t
A new episode of PBS Eons is out. It is about the Piltdown Man and how our understanding of Evolution has changed since. The myth of the Missing Link–the idea that there must be a specimen that partly resembles an ape but also partly resembles a modern human–is persistent. But the reality is that…
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Reminder: March General Meeting is on Friday, March 9th, 2018 – Dr. Dan Gebo “Human Evolution – An Update”
The speaker will be Dr. Dan Gebo from the Department of Anthropology at NIU. The title of his talk is "Human Evolution – An Update". Come on out, we missed you in February!
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A Jawbone Is the Oldest Modern-Human Fossil Outside of Africa
The Atlantic has a story about a recent discovery that threatens to rewrite the early history of modern humans. The find from an Israeli cave dates to between 177,000 and 194,000 years ago. These dates, along with a 315,000 year old fossil from Ethiopia, call into question the previous “Out of Africa” estimates of 50-60,000…
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The February General Meeting has been rescheduled for March 9th, 2018
The February General Meeting has been rescheduled for March 9th, 2018. The speaker will be Dr. Dan Gebo from the Department of Anthropology at NIU. The title of his talk is “Human Evolution – An Update”. Come on out, we missed you in February!
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Dr. Robert Martin Lecture Tonight – Friday, May 13
If you are interested in learning more about Dr. Martin, the Field Museum offers information… In the tree of life, human evolution is a very unusual case in many ways. If the focus of study is too narrow, it is difficult to avoid special pleading. My long-term research strategy has hence been rooted in the…
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Scientist Zeresenay Alemseged: Someone to Know
Via EthioBlog: Ethiopian scientist Zeresenay (Zeray) Alemseged, who discovered the 3.3 million year old girl fossil called Selam in Ethiopia, is featured on PBS’s “Becoming Human” documentary which is being shown this week. Zeresenay is currently curator and chair of anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences and a world renowned paleontologist….
